Telemedicine Utilization Among Residents With Alzheimer Disease and Related Dementia: Association With Nursing Home Characteristics.
Qiuyuan Qin, Mingting Yang, Peter Veazie and 3 others
PMID 39013475WHAT IT FOUND
During the pandemic, telemedicine use among nursing home residents with dementia fell from 35.0% to 9.3%.
Facilities with more Black residents used less telemedicine after the early pandemic; rural homes used less early but more later than metropolitan homes.
Key findings
01Telemedicine use among nursing home residents with ADRD fell from 35.0% in 2020 Q2 to 9.3% in 2021 Q4.
02Nursing homes with a higher proportion of Black residents had lower telemedicine use than those with a lower proportion; in 2021 Q2 to 2021 Q4, use was 1.5 percentage points lower.
03Rural nursing homes had 6.4 percentage points lower telemedicine use than metropolitan homes in 2020 Q2, but 5.9 percentage points higher use in 2021 Q2 to 2021 Q4.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Only Medicare fee-for-service nursing home residents with ADRD were included, so results may not apply to Medicare Advantage residents or residents without ADRD. The analysis was at the nursing home-quarter level, so it does not show what happened to individual residents or why they did or did not use telemedicine. ADRD may be underestimated using claims data. Homes with fewer than 20 ADRD residents in all quarters were excluded, so smaller homes are not represented. The study covers 2020 to 2021, and telemedicine use may have changed later. It did not measure whether telemedicine replaced in-person visits or improved access and outcomes.
Declared interests
The authors reported no known conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the lower telemedicine use in homes with more Black residents as evidence that telemedicine is harmful or that staff are failing. The study is observational, did not test telemedicine effectiveness, and did not show whether telemedicine replaced in-person care or improved resident outcomes.